A Sheriff’s Haven For The Rebellious Bride (Western Historical Romance) Page 2

  Sometimes it felt as though I had been dropped onto the mountain of Emery Peak from a faraway place. Nothing about me was like anyone else.

  I hated the taste of liquor, and the sound of Woody's fiddle made me want to run away, not dance.

  Meanwhile, where all my family saw the mountain as the center of their world, I saw it as just a starting point, just a place where I could spring from to another place where reading books wasn't frowned upon and the smell of farm animals didn't linger on your clothes.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Eileen in barely more than a whisper.

  I looked up at the sky and a wispy patch of cloud drifted by to let a white moonbeam shine directly onto the ground. It landed on my lap to illuminate the book in my hand.

  “I was thinking a lot of things,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Dear goodness, Eileen. Why are you always so curious? If you must know, I was wondering what it would feel like to live through a day without being in fear of Pa.”

  She looked at me as though I had gone quite mad. The words Pa and fear went together like peaches and cream. It was just the way things were.

  “Pa is a good man,” said Eileen.

  “He is?”

  I guessed he had to be because plenty of people thought so. When I was younger, I certainly thought he was as wonderful as baby Jesus.

  He was my Pa, the greatest man in the world and he could do no wrong. When I was ten years old there was no doubting he was a good man.

  It was only as I grew older and started to look at the way he acted with a more mature eye that I started to think differently about him. As I grew up, his crude jokes weren't funny anymore, they were just rude, and his disciplining of the children was no longer virtuous, it was just cruel.

  Still, I didn't blame him for the way he acted. It was just in his nature, in his blood. He had come from a long line of O'Laney men who had lived on this mountain for generations.

  They were all rough, all wild and raucous, but that's what helped them survive up here. If Pa was the church mouse of a father I'd wanted, we would have all ceased to exist. No, I guessed he wasn't a bad man. He didn't go out of his way to hurt people, not really.

  He was just doing what he was raised to believe was right. I tried to remember this as I listened to the drunken noise of the barn dance. He's just an old drunk trying to get by, I told myself. Just like his Pa and his Pa and his Pa and his Pa.

  The clouds cleared some more so an even brighter beam of moonlight shone onto the mountain. It glittered off the leaves of the sparse trees like silver rain drops.

  I stood up and brushed the dirt from my skirts. Looking down the mountain, I watched the faint firelight glittering like jewels in the houses of Hollistown. It was less than a mile away, but it may as well have been on another continent. The people down there had about as much in common with us as the Inuits of Greenland I had read about in an old history book.

  “You're not thinking about that hellish Hollistown again, are you?” asked Eileen.

  She was suddenly right behind me with her hand on my shoulder. Her nails were digging through my dress as a warning. She knew I had always wanted to go down there, to explore a life away from the mountain, and she forbid it as much as everyone else did.

  “Of course I'm thinking about it,” I said. “Have you ever wondered why we're never allowed down there? But Pa and our brothers can go down there all they want if they want to ransack the saloon?”

  Her grip on my shoulder tightened until it started to hurt.

  “You know full well us ladies aren't allowed down there. Or off this mountain for that matter.”

  “And you're happy with that?”

  She said nothing.

  “Because I'm not happy with that. I want off here. I want to go exploring! I want to go down to that town and speak to a man that knows how to hold their liquor and who speaks to me as though I'm worth more than a lowly sow. I want to live, Eileen. I want to see things and meet people and read more books and maybe even write my own some day.”

  I waited for her response, but none came. Instead, she took a step back, gasped and froze on the spot. I turned around to see the moonlight shining in her petrified eyes.

  “What is it?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but was unable to utter a single sound. Her eyes were tracking something behind me, her pupils growing larger like a cat's who just spotted a bird.

  “Eileen?”

  The fear in her face intensified. A chill tickled at the back of my neck sending all the hairs standing up to attention along my spine. I was now aware we were being watched by invisible eyes creeping out of the shadows.

  As slowly as I could, I turned my head inch by inch until I was staring into the darkness. Through the inky blackness hovered the orange glow of a single lantern.

  It brightened the space around it so I could see a calloused, nicotine stained hand and a familiar stained leather coat. There was the faint outline of a bearded jaw with wiry gray hair sprouting out from a black muzzle. I was too scared to look any higher in case I gazed into the eyes.

  “Pa...” I whispered.

  It felt as though I had a plum stone lodged in my throat and a length of rope winding its way around my guts. Now, I wasn't full of the adventurous spirit I'd held only a moment ago. Now, I just wanted to be swallowed up by the shadows.

  “Wanna speak to a man who can hold their liquor?” Pa growled. “Wanna get spoken to as though you're not a lowly sow?”

  His words were spat out through his gritted broken teeth with flecks of spittle landing on his chapped lips. He took a step closer and my body felt the urge to take one back, but I couldn't move.

  For a second, I closed my eyes and hoped if I stayed still long enough he would leave me alone, but I knew he would never do that. He would never leave me alone.

  “Just who do you think you are, girl?”

  I held my breath and reached for Eileen's hand. Her sweaty fingers met mine and gripped tight.

  “Eh?” he shouted and lurched forward.

  I could smell the stench of moonshine now. It was so strong it burned my eyes. Pa's face moved into the moonlight so I could see just how bloodshot his eyes were.

  “Eh!” he yelled again. “Talk to me, girl! I heard everything you said. Heard every one of your la-di-dah aspirations of getting off this mountain.”

  The more I looked at him, the more I thought he looked less like a man and more like a wild bear. Except I was less frightened of the bears.

  All you had to do was make a loud noise and they'd go running into the trees. I could never get rid of Pa so easily. He moved closer to me, his eyes shifting between me and Eileen. His eyes focused on our tangled hands then moved to the ground.

  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lay open at the foot of the tree. He stomped over to it and picked it up by the edge of the pages as though it was a cow pat.

  “What have I told you about sticking your nose in books!”

  Before I could say a word or reach forward to save it, he took a step toward the edge of the mountain and hurled the book out into the night.

  Its white pages spun into the darkness and disappeared down into the abyss. The sound of it hitting the rocks faded down into the distance and my beloved book was gone.

  Now the plum stone was a lump of granite and it was filling my throat with a physical pain until I felt the sting of tears in my eyes.

  Pa staggered toward me and pushed his finger into the center of my chest.

  “Just who do you think you are?”

  It was more of a threat than a question.

  “Ey? Who do you think you are? You won't ever grace us with your presence at the dance because ... what? You're too good for us? You're too fancy? Because you'd rather read some pointless book than spend time with your family!”

  He latched his strong fingers onto my arm and shook me until I had no choice but to let go of Eileen.

  “Books'll g
et you nowhere,” he raged. “Not on this mountain. Not anywhere. You think you'll find yourself a husband in this community if you keep reading books? It's a damn shame, you know. Having to tell people my own daughter won't drink and dance with the rest of us 'cos she got her nose in a book and her head in the clouds.”

  I didn't understand how he could be so angry. Was it really so bad to want some peace to educate myself? Was it really so terrible that I just wanted to be alone?

  “But Pa...” I began. “I don't want to...”

  Suddenly Eileen's hand sprung out and hit my arm to silence me.

  “Shh...” she whispered. “Don't make him even madder.”

  But I couldn't hold it in. No matter how afraid I was of Pa, I was more afraid of being stuck on the mountain forever, living a life that was forced upon me. So, against my better judgement, I found myself opening my mouth and finishing the sentence that would change my life forever.

  “Pa... I don't want to ... find a husband. I don't want to get married.”

  The confusion reached his eyes a fraction of a second before the anger did.

  “What ... did you say?”

  I cursed my big mouth and wished I could suck the words back in.

  “I didn't ... I didn't say anything, Pa.”

  I could feel the fear coming from Eileen. Glancing over at her, I saw her staring at her boots as though she was praying the situation would disappear. But by the look on Pa's face, I knew it was only going to get worse.

  He grabbed my arm again, this time tighter and snarled in my face.

  “I heard what you said... Don't want a husband? How dare you? You think you're too good for the sanctity of marriage? Think you're too good to be someone's wife!”

  I hadn't realized I was crying until I felt a single salty tear land on my top lip. Inside my skirts, my knees were trembling and knocking together. Why had I been so stupid? Shouldn't I have known better than to run my mouth?

  “I've had enough of you behaving like you don't belong in this family,” Pa spat.

  His hand sprung out and grabbed my wrist.

  “You're coming with me.”

  Before I could protest, he dragged me back into the thick woods.

  “I'm too soft on you,” he said. “Too damn soft and it's about time you learned to behave like a proper O'Laney!”

  Propelled by his anger, he trampled through the darkness of the undergrowth dragging me along behind him with such force I had no choice but to stumble and trip over the rocks and tree roots.

  “Pa! I'm sorry! I didn't mean what I said. I'll come to the dance now!”

  But he wasn't listening to me and continued to ramble to himself.

  “The damn insolence of this one,” he muttered. “I've done nothing but try to raise my kids right and there's this one... Thinks she won't have a need to take a husband. Thinks she'll write her own book one day, too. Never heard anything so ridiculous in my whole damn life.”

  The sound of the dance grew louder as we approached the barn. It looked as though I was going to the party after all, but as we approached the main door where people were spilling out in various stages of drunkenness, I felt Pa steer me away and around the back of the building.

  “Pa? Are we not going to the dance?”

  For the first time all night, he didn't say a word, and somehow that was even more frightening.

  “Pa? Where are we going?”

  His grip on my wrist tightened as he pulled me away from the barn until we were walking out toward the pig pen. The smell of manure stung my nose and my mouth turned dry. Pa had never dragged me out here before, and why was he being so quiet?

  “Pa? Did you hear me? I said I was sorry. I didn't really mean what I said about not wanting a husband.”

  We kept walking in silence until even the pig pen was disappearing behind us and there was only one building left. The chicken coop. Only now did he let go of my arm and speak.

  “You need to learn a lesson,” he snarled. “Need to be brought down a peg or two.”

  My stomach flipped and I was overwhelmed with the need to run, but where would I go? Looking over to the chicken coop, I tried to guess what punishment Pa had in mind for me, but as I looked into his eyes, I saw nothing but a manic, glazed over expression.

  “You can say goodbye to your books and your daydreaming,” he said. “You'll not be getting any fanciful ideas again.”

  My breath had stopped reaching my lungs. I couldn't stop looking at the chicken coop.

  “I-I-I said I'm ... sorry,” I tried to say through my dried-out mouth.

  Pa opened the door of the coop and glared at me. His eyes were nothing more than stormy whirlpools illuminated by the firelight from the lantern. They didn't even look human.

  “Say hello to your new home,” he said. “You'll be living with the chickens until you learn how to behave properly. Now get in.”

  I stared at the door and thought about running, but before I could, he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and tossed me inside.

  My knees landed on the soiled floor with a thud as the chickens woke up in a panic. They screeched and flapped their wings against me until I was engulfed in the smell of bird droppings. I felt the terror of flapping wings against my legs as I scrambled to get away from them.

  “Pa, don't leave me in here!”

  His response came in the sound of the door being bolted shut. Looking through the narrow gaps between the wooden slats, I could see the light of his lantern disappearing back across the pig pen toward the barn.

  “Pa!”

  But he was long gone. Gradually, the chickens started to settle down and stop flapping against me. Is this it? I thought. Is this my life now?

  Chapter 2 – Maxwell

  As I rounded the corner and arrived at the saloon, Barney was already standing out front with a cigar pinched between his teeth. From behind him, I could hear the sound of the honky tonk piano being battered by Rufus the bartender.

  "Thought it was your horse I heard come racing ‘round here," said Barney as he slapped his hand into mine for one of his bone-crushing handshakes.

  "I'm amazed you heard anything through all that noise. What with Rufus torturing that poor piano and the O'Laney's up there throwing one of their shindigs. Sounds like a pack of wolves up there, it does. Who knows what they're up to."

  "Probably best we don't know."

  The two of us looked up at the mountain and saw nothing but a few lights shining out from where I guessed the gathering was happening. I wasn't surprised to hear the noise coming from up there. Every second weekend without fail they'd be drinking themselves into a stupor guzzling jug after jug of moonshine. It was a mystery they hadn't turned themselves blind yet.

  "Think they're gonna come down and raid the saloon again?" asked Barney.

  "Not if they know what's good for 'em."

  I rolled a cigarette and Barney held a lighter to my mouth.